The Adventures of Water Beetle
by CondorRadcliff
Summary: SU Side Story. A new threat is emerging in the Pacific, and the Monster Response Organization isn't able to handle it. MRO Agent 277 must recruit Wayt Treble, a cleanup specialist, to take care of this new mess!


_Constancy - the world stays the same?_

 _Constancy - change what you became_

 _Constancy - see only what you seek?_

 _Constancy - then make your search unique_

 _Over land, in the sea,_

 _Through the sky, where all are free_

 _It's time to travel, to find answers!_

 _Now there's a need to quest_

 _Now there's a promise to test_

 _And now you fight because you're the best!_

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 **The Incident at Mili**

" _Wayt? Wayt, please respond,_ " the voice crackled through the radio.

Wayt was a little busy. The permit had finally come through to strip and clean Stationary Relic #D-84-4281 of its hazardous materials, and it was only good for a few days. Essentially, she had been granted permission to strip lead paint from an old military base building; it was just in a historic location, and therefore tied up in more red tape than Australian food imports. So she had to work fast while the weather was cooperating, and _not_ spend any time answering random requests over the radio.

" _Wayt Treble, please respond. We have an emergency at Mili and we need your help. Wayt Treble, please respond…_ " the voice continued. It was a quiet place. Emergencies that required her help in the atoll could vary from getting something off the top shelf for someone's Bubu, to helping Lang push his truck out of the sand.

But, it would be rude to not answer. So she stopped working and activated her end of the communication. "This is Wayt. What's going on, Lakatoo?"

That wasn't Cab's name. Everyone just called him that. " _Wayt! Hey, can you get back here? We have an emerge-_ "

"-I know, I heard. What's going on?"

" _It's a whale!_ "

"...And?" It was the wrong season for one to visit, but there were stragglers sometimes.

" _We've, uh, never seen one like this._ "

"Yeah?"

" _Yeah. It's black, night black - and its bones are on the outside!_ "

"...Say that again?"

" _We think it might be a monster._ "

Wayt looked back at the building. She'd gotten maybe 80% of it stripped and secured, and the report had indicated stable weather for the rest of the day… "Y'kay, I'm heading back."

" _Thanks!_ "

Wayt ran back to her plane, the Mollymawk, waiting for her on the beach. She jumped into the storage compartment, folded up her humanoid frame, then hopped out of its insect-sized cockpit and into an insect-sized pilot's seat. The Mollymawk, like the Model 7 Frame she'd transferred from, didn't have an onboard power source; being trapped in a tiny form meant that her Gem now produced excess energy, more than enough to power a vehicle.

" _!-!_ " she chittered at the instruments, and the Mollymawk's control system booted up.

Small cleaning units inside the airframe and mechanics flushed out any contaminants with a _fwoosh_ , while outside the propellers spun up to idling speed. The directional jets swung out of the aft fuselage as they completed their diagnostic tests, and rotated into lifting position. " _!-!-!_ " Wayt chittered, pushing a tiny thrust lever with a middle leg.

The jets activated, lifting the Mollymawk into the air and holding it in position. The instruments looked good and there wasn't any other air traffic in the area to be concerned about, so Wayt pushed a separate thrust lever out all the way. The propellers increased speed until they were pulling the Mollymawk through the tropic air, heading back towards Mili. (With a free leg, she quickly wrote up and submitted an emergency flight plan to the main airport, since the most direct route back would take her right over it.)

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Officer Cab Jacob of the Mili Police Department paced around nervously on the beach, waiting for either a monster or a savior to arrive. It was a typically good day - sunny, not windy, with calm seas until a little while ago, which was the first sign of trouble. Then the first calls had come in from fishing boats to the southwest, about a night-black monster whale with a gem in its forehead, swimming towards Mili Atoll at a decent clip.

The region hadn't had a monster attack in eighty years and the islands simply didn't have the means or the budget to respond adequately. He'd put a call in to the Monster Response Organization, as per protocol, but their nearest resources were deployed eight hours away. So, as a stopgap, the other four members of the Mili Police Department had mobilized and begun emergency evacuations.

Cab himself became Wayt's contact/assistant when he joined, it being a responsibility of the New Guy's. He later figured out that, since everyone on Mili knew Wayt, it was just a way to give a rookie something to do. They'd become friends in the four years since, with a set routine of going to Johnny's Sport Bar every Friday for a beer, and he was aware that she wasn't exactly human.

It was an open secret, that. No one on Mili ever questioned what _exactly_ Wayt was, or why she always covered her face with bandages. Everyone knew that Wayt Treble paid her taxes, voted, offered help freely, made delicious (if incongruous) Sancocho for public occasions/ill neighbors/rewards, had largely finished decontaminating the country of fallout and lead, owned an airstrip, and was a friendly ear when someone needed one. Personally, Cab liked her memories and stories of past World Cups - and that she'd apparently been at Wembley in 1966 to clearly see England win _**3**_ -2.

Wayt could be the Invisible Woman for all Cab cared. He knew how much she'd already done for the atolls, so she could probably do _something_ about a monster attack. Short of a miracle, no one else could…

" _...Cab? Cab. Lakatoo, are you there?_ " his radio crackled.

"Wayt?"

" _Yes, Wayt. Can you fill me in on what's going on?_ "

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

By the time Wayt had finished flying low over Majuro, she was ...still not entirely clear on what was going on. Cab was a good man who joined the MPD straight out of high school, intent on saving the world, but between the daily grind and a lack of major incidents he'd become somewhat chatty. "Lakatoo, I'm only ten minutes out. I need you to tell me what exactly I should expect," Wayt said, her chittering automatically translated into English through a speaker.

" _That is kind of a hard question. I haven't seen it myself, y'know? But we got reports of a monster whale swimming towards Mili._ "

"Again, I know that part already."

" _Oh! Okay, uhh, give me a second?_ " The signal cut for a moment, then Cab continued. " _They sent a picture! It's, uhh, about ninety feet long. Looks like a blue whale, and that's weird 'cause they're all supposed to have gone south for the summer. Makes fishing easier when you don't have to worry about a whale nearby, right? So the 'Heart of Fahrenheit' saw this one, thought it was weird that it was there - and heading straight for land - so they got in closer and took a picture. I didn't believe them at first, but then I saw the picture-_ "

"-Cab."

" _Yeah?_ "

"Where is it now?"

"' _Heart of Fahrenheit' said it was about eighty miles away to the southwest, five minutes ago, and making a beeline for Mili._ "

"Speed? Heading?" Wayt opened a map on a side screen with a spare leg.

" _Twelve knots, heading North-East. Their exact words were 'almost perfectly North-East'._ "

That wasn't specific enough, but it would have to do. Luckily, local flight control had been able to give her everything under 3,000 feet for the area, so all she needed to do was add a course to her map. If everything was accurate, that would give her a few square miles to try and find the whale over. "Roger. I'm headed straight there. Can you get everyone out of the water there?"

" _Yeah, the evacuation is going - uhh, 'pretty well'. Doesn't feel like the right way to say that. Land and seas should be clear soon._ "

"Roger that. Keep me updated."

" _Will do._ "

And with that, Wayt changed course for the open sea.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

She'd had to decrease altitude down to 500 feet, but there it was: a whale monster. The 'black as night' part turned out to be extremely accurate, in that the monster's surface seemed to _absorb_ light to the point that it was easy to find just below the surface.

It was a monster, to be sure, but not like the ones that had run amuck thousands of years ago. This one was too… the word she wanted to use was 'mechanical', even though it was clearly living tissue. It moved too repetitively; 12 knots was a 'cruising speed' for a creature of its size, but still too fast to maintain without some fluctuation in movement pattern. That, at least, was explained by the large gem in its forehead, an unusually dark one in what the humans called a baguette cut. The gem was _too_ large, in fact, far larger than anything she'd heard of in the Gem race - let alone a naturally-occurring Earth mineral! It had to be as long as a _small car_ , maybe slightly over ten feet, just at any eyeball-guess.

The fishing crew that had spotted it had good instincts. Nothing about the whale seemed natural, and _they'd_ spotted it at a safer distance than she was circling it at. She made a mental note to bring them some stew when everything was all settled down.

So, what could she do about the Whale Monster, she wondered as she circled it. Her previous Gem Monster fighting exploits amounted to carefully setting elaborate traps over the course of a week, with half-and-half odds of success. The Mollymawk didn't carry any weapons, of course, though it had some tow cables. Directly attacking it was probably right out, and it looked like it had too much mass to lift.

All she could do was wait for - what did they call themselves? The Crystal Gems? She could wait for them to show up later and cause collateral damage, or she could wait for the MRO to show up in a couple of days and be ineffective, or…

Wayt disliked violence. It was a final resort, to be used only when all other possibilities had been exhausted. It was why she had gotten into the decontamination life in the first place, feeling it was better to clean up than make a mess. But, she had to admit, sometimes those other possibilities had never been possible in the first place; sometimes the only avenue to protecting the peace and happiness of others was through dematerializing a Gem Monster.

She sighed, and pushed the control stick. The Mollymawk responded with a roll and a dive, soon stabilizing above the water at an altitude risky even for flying boats, just above stall speed. Then, as she approached the Whale Monster, she tipped a wing down and gunned the jets.

The Mollymawk was an aircraft of few words. The most common was " _spectacularly overengineered beyond a reasonable explanation_ "; this obliquely referred to how it was apparently propeller-driven, with a stated max speed of 530 mph in good conditions, yet was capable of surviving _ballistic reentry_. It didn't actually _look_ like it could do this, however, and so a bystander would probably be surprised to see it clip a whale with a wingtip and nearly bisect it.

There were no bystanders though, just water and the surprised bleating of the Whale Monster. There was also no blood or flesh, just pieces of dark mass scattering through the air before splattering back to the surface, the result of being cleaved by a slender wing at a substantial fraction of Mach. A maneuver like that was enough, Wayt hoped, as she eased up on the tiny thrust lever and extended the flaps, pulling into a loop to get a better look look at the results.

With the flaps extended and zero forward thrust, the Mollymawk began to glide, and gradually decelerated down to a less ostentatious speed. In moments the Whale Monster was back in view again, this time under full analysis by the Mollymawk's scanning array. She hadn't expected the maneuver to be a finishing blow; that was the Plan A that never worked. Gem Monsters tended to be quick to recover and smart enough to hold a grudge, so her Plan B had been to get its attention and coax it away from Mili - say, to Jaluit, which was lightly inhabited on its southeastern end.

But the Whale Monster's heading hadn't changed. Very nearly bisecting it had done nothing to get its attention. It had slowed down, briefly and not by much, to recover.

That had been the best move Wayt could manage in the Mollymawk. And now it was time for Plan C. "Cab, I've met the Whale Monster. There's nothing I can do from the air," she chittered into the radio, letting it translate.

" _Oh no,_ " Cab replied.

"Any sign of the MRO?"

" _No, none._ "

"Then there's one other option..." Wayt turned back towards Mili. It was a minor blessing that the Whale Monster wasn't any faster than an actual whale underwater. "I'm heading back. I need you to get to my office and prep the Model Six with the Dive Unit, y'kay?"

" _Wha- really? I don't know if I-_ "

"-Standard startup protocol followed by backpack unit adjustment. There's a clipboard hanging on the side of my desk that'll tell you what to do. And don't worry, you'll do fine. I'll be there in fifteen minutes - go now, Cab!"

"... _Okay, roger that,_ " he said, with uncharacteristic hesitation.

As uncomfortable as slicing through with the Mollymawk had been for her, it was still better than taking out the Model Six. Wayt steeled herself, and prepared for the worst.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Cab pulled up to Wayt's hangers just off of the airstrip. He caught a quick look at the console clock as he jumped out of his jeep - about ten minutes left - and ran towards one of the green hangers, the one marked with a large **1**. One of Cab's jobs as Wayt's contact/assistant was to prepare her equipment for a quick startup in an emergency, and so on paper he'd been 'trained' for it.

The silver-haired guest in Wayt's waiting room wasn't startled when he barged in. He thought he heard her begin to introduce herself; "Sorry ma'am, it's an emergency. You'll have to keep waiting," he told her quickly as he ran into Wayt's office. The clipboard with the checklist was right where Wayt had said it would be, which he took with such gusto that it nearly pulled the nail out. "There's some drinks in the fridge, please help yourself," he told the guest as he ran outside, past a small green moped and to the **2** hanger next door.

Wayt preferred to call it the Model Six, because it was the sixth robot she'd built. Everyone else on Mili called it the Smashcleaner, because it was twelve feet tall and could clean up catastrophic messes with violence. Nonetheless, its primary intended purposes was environmental decontamination and large-scale cleanup, and Cab knew she liked it that way. If she was intending to use it to stop a Gem Monster, it meant that she'd already had to put aside her personal stance on violence.

So, she'd asked him to prep the absolute last chance the atoll had. And as he went down the checklist, he knew he _could not_ screw this up. Step one, he rolled the maintenance structure down from over the Model Six and began standing it up from its supine position...

A bit under ten minutes later, Cab heard the rushing of air outside, indicating that a VTOL was landing - the Mollymawk, since no one else would bring one to Mili. There was a solid _bump_ as it touched down, and then Wayt was at Cab's side. "Is it ready?" she asked.

"Y-yeah. I think so," Cab said. His hands shook a little as he removed the crane hooks from the freshly-attached Dive Unit, the final step. "Did I do it okay?"

Wayt glanced up at the upright Model Six-Dive for the briefest of glances. "It is. You did good, Lakatoo!" She pulled off his hat and ruffled his hair in appreciation, then tossed the hat back to him. "Now, turn around for a second."

Cab looked away. He had never actually seen Wayt board the Model Six, and it wasn't clear to him exactly how she operated it. There wasn't any space in the robot for a human pilot, it seemed, and he'd figured she had a proprietary hanger-based remote control system. Either way, he heard that tiny hatch on its head shut, and then the Model Six rumbled to life.

" **Don't worry, Cab, you assembled it correctly. Now stand back,** " Wayt said through the Model Six's speakers. The vertical gantries pulled away from it after the support rails folded down from its feet, increasing their surface area. It took a step forward, shaking the ground when its foot touched down, and then another and another until it was outside. There it stood fully upright, completely unaffected by the balance issues the Dive Pack ought to have caused (being essentially a barrel as long as the Model Six was tall, attached perpendicularly to its back).

It had three talons instead of five fingers for hands, which Wayt was spinning around on their wrists in a test of their mobility. The arms were long, coming down to its knees, for better clearance when lifting things. Its feet, currently with forward and rear support rails fully deployed, were proportionally wider than a human's, and were equipped with vent units for propulsion underwater. In keeping with Wayt's dislike of violence, the Model Six carried no offensive weaponry; it was, however, equipped with a barrier system that she never discussed. For what it was capable of, it was unusually slight and light - a pickup truck working as a medium tank - appearing to consist of only motors and servos and no power supply. Its head was as big around as a two-person table and, at the front, looked like a car front sans grill. And on its torso were four red nubs on black plates - two across the chest, two down the abdomen.

Cab had never seen the Model Six move in person, not really. He'd helped Wayt maintain it a few times, and of course she'd had him practice preparing it for use. Nothing about it was particularly frightening to look at, but at the same time it was a little unsettling to see something that big and obviously mechanical move with such fluidity and ease over an uneven surface. For better or for worse, it radiated purpose and power with each movement. There was no doubt in his mind that, used with ill intent, very little could stop it from demolishing a small town on its own.

Working for _righteousness_ as Cab knew Wayt would, however, it could rebuild that town _while_ fighting off a Gem Monster.

" _Get 'im_ , Wayt," Cab said, fists and teeth clenched.

The Model Six stopped moving. " **Hey, about that…** " the speaker boomed.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Treble Environmental Services was well-known throughout the environmental remediation and decontamination field, and not just for how isolated the main office was. No, TES was an acronym cash-strapped local governments turned to, when their national government or regional economic powerhouse refused to pay for their catastrophic errors. It didn't advertise - what business it got was entirely through word of mouth, all of it positive. (To say the reviews were 'glowing' would be in poor taste, given that TES also offered radioactive decontamination.)

That wasn't why a silver-haired woman was waiting in its lobby/waiting room/kitchenette, however.

The woman, normally stationed in western Asia, had travelled a considerable distance to consult with the enigmatic Wayt Treble - CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, Janitor, President, and apparently sole employee of Treble Environmental Services. She'd only been in the country since that morning, having caught a boat from Majuro as soon as she landed. All she carried with her was a briefcase, and she'd rented a moped to carry it. That alone was worth a few looks, but she was also in a full suit and tie, 90/80 weather notwithstanding.

She'd been waiting an hour, but was expecting to wait until evening. Or _had_ been, until a young police officer had burst in and out, telling her to grab a drink from the fridge. (Which turned out to contain a variety of, specifically, sugar-free colas.)

Then a plane had landed outside, and a medium-sized robot had walked out of the hanger next door.

The woman thought nothing of it until the police officer from before drove away in a truck, towing the robot behind it.

She put two and two together, finished her cola, and then left the office, calmly following the robot on her rented moped.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Model Six was slow on land. It walked on legs, which gave it a good mix of stability and agility but was inefficient as a means of mobility at its size. Its top walking speed was more for keeping pace with excavation vehicles. But, the foot-mounted support rails could be deployed to form _skis_ , which made it easier to push or pull even on Mili's gravel airstrip.

" **Thanks, Cab,** " Wayt said, as Cab pulled up to the sand, having dragged the Model Six there with his truck. She began trudging through the sand to the sea, like an enormous baby turtle. " **Don't wait for me. Clear out of here, y'kay?** " she boomed back at him.

"No. No, I'm waiting here!" Cab shouted up to the Model Six's head. "I can't get away in time now, anyway!"

" **Find a place! That monster's coming** _ **here**_ **if I can't stop it. It might even cut through to the lagoon!** "

"Then I'll stream it on Tube Tube when it does!" Cab said defiantly. He whipped out his phone and laughed. "Go get 'em, Wayt! Beers are on me tonight!"

Wayt chuckled to herself at the thought, despite herself. Humans were ecologically problematic and caused enormous disasters at least four times a year - but were capable of the kindness and courage necessary to undo them. They were simultaneously the problem _and_ the solution, with a species-wide sense of gallows humor to go with it.

Cab had, sensibly, pulled her to the section of the beach that had been dredged during one of the wars to facilitate cargo offloading. It meant a shorter walk, and thus a shorter time until she was in the water. On land, even without the additional weight of the Dive Pack, the Model Six was slow and cumbersome.

Underwater, it was a _dolphin_.

The Dive Pack was essentially a ballast tank with vectored waterjets attached. Since it was powered directly by her own energy, full throttle was a little draining on Wayt - an acceptable tradeoff, under the circumstances, for 45+ knots. Faster, if she folded the limbs back.

In moments, Wayt was cruising along the surface of the Pacific Ocean at highway speeds, on an intercept course with the Whale Monster.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The Whale Monster was inconveniently close to Mili - less than five minutes out by Wayt's count. "Upside is, no waiting," she chittered to herself as she moved to intercept it.

As when she had been buzzing it from the sky, the Whale Monster took no notice when Wayt circled around and pulled alongside of it. It was a strange thing to look at up close, with a physical surface as dark as a cat's dilated pupils, textured like a piece of pumice. Researchers from various fields would give up organs to study it.

 _They can keep 'em_ , Wayt thought, and drove a claw into the Whale Monster. It reacted as it had before, with pain, but now it seemed to realize its attacker was underwater with it, and flicked its tail.

This sudden force was enough to knock the Model Six away, forcing Wayt to correct its thrust to catch up again. "Y'kay, buddy, now you're gettin' the one-two," she chittered. She drove first one, then the other claw into the Whale Monster's side, dragging herself up above the surface in the process.

The Whale Monster bleated in surprised pain, and began squirming and splashing to shake it off again. This time, though, Wayt held on. And when she saw an opportunity to do so, she pulled out one claw to quickly shove it in again a little closer to the Whale Monster's front end.

Punch by punch, stab by stab, Wayt inched up towards the silvery Gem on its forehead, hanging on as well as she could even as the monster's thrashing intensified. A live map on the side of her cockpit made it clear: it was altering the monster's path, but not by enough to matter for how close the shore was.

That left only one option: remove or disable the Gem itself.

Wayt could have seen Mili on her long-range sensors the whole time she was in the water. Byt the time she'd made it to the Whale Monster's head and Gem, she could see _Cab still on the beach_.

 _Now or never!_ she thought. "Drill!" she squeaked, and the claw she'd just torn out began to spin. She plunged it into the center of the Gem - to no effect, or scratch.

A proximity warning began going off in her cockpit. The shoreline was getting closer!

She shoved first one, then the other drilling claw under the sides of the Gem, grabbed it, and began to pull.

And pull.

 _And pull!_

The Gem refused to budge.

The shoreline got closer.

 _!-?_ Another warning alarm went off in her cockpit.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Cab had been so fixated on what was happening with the monster that he hadn't heard the moped pull up. He didn't hear the silver-haired woman walk up. He registered that someone had said something, but it wasn't a good time. "Not now, not _now_!"

"Sir, this is important."

"No, not as much as-" he began, turning to look at the voice. He stopped when he saw the badge she was holding up.

"I'm with the MRO," the woman said. "Can you tell me where Wayt Treble is?"

"...huh?"

The woman sighed. "Noon Sol Daybreak, Agent 277, Monster Response Organization, Pacific Ocean Branch. I need to speak with Wayt Treble. Do you know where she is, officer?"

Cab's finger was pointing out at the battle before he could respond. "She's out there…"

"Hm. That's troublesome." Agent Daybreak put away her badge and calmly picked up a metal box with her left arm, slinging it onto her right shoulder. The front and back ends popped off, and Cab realized that she was holding onto it by a trigger handle. "Officer, get down and cover your ears," she said in a calm, commanding voice.

That was the only warning Cab got, and he was barely on the ground - hands over ears - when she fired.

 _ **POOM-POOM-POOM-POOM**_

In two seconds, four lines of smoke were trailing out towards the Whale Monster, then suddenly and sharply angling down from above it, terminating in bright flashes against its flesh.

Cab heard the monster _**ROAR**_ , and then…

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Wayt had only a moment realize that someone had fired _rockets_ at her and the Whale Monster, and then she saw the flashes along its body.

The Gem suddenly came loose. _Unexpectedly_ came loose.

The Model Six was then flying through the air, towards the shore; Wayt activated all the jets she could to control its trajectory.

When she landed, it was in single-digit fathom depths, and she was mostly upright. In the time it took her to surface, she figured out that the rockets had weakened the monster somehow, allowing her to pull the gem out…

… _!_

This time she reacted quickly enough, gunning the jets again to get back to the shore, jumping out of the water when it was shallow enough and landing in front of Cab (and a silver-haired woman?).

She threw the Gem into the foliage and, facing the water, activated the Model Six's barrier system at full power.

The sand in front of her burst outward from being in the barrier's way, only to splatter against a wall of water ten feet tall rushing at the shore...

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

" **Cab, are you alright?** " Wayt asked once the wave had hit.

"He's fine, just a little startled," an unfamiliar voice responded. A woman's voice; young, authoritative, confident, and far too calm for what had just happened. "Are you Wayt Treble?"

Wayt quickly banged out a high wave warning to the local authorities (the wave was thankfully far too weak to be a tsunami, probably due to originating in shallow water), then turned her attention to the woman. She was clearly young in age and with darker skin, both similar to Cab. Her silver hair - _silver_ , not gray or white - stood out, but not as much as the full black suit and gloves she wore. Humans got hot, Wayt knew, and it was ninety degrees out with 80% humidity!

So, just to be sure, she scanned the woman.

 _Huh. Human,_ Wayt thought. Right body temperature, right amount of density, right number of bones - _human_. As human as Cab was, on all fours on the sand next to her and looking like he was trying to process the situation.

The woman was also waiting expectantly for an answer. " **Yes, I'm Wayt Treble. How do you do, Miz...?** " Wayt said.

The woman produced a badge. "Agent Noon Sol Daybreak, with Mon-RO. I need to speak with you at your earliest convenience concerning the monster you just destabilized," she said, in the same calm tone as if she was in an office lobby.

" **Well, uh, kindly follow us back to my office and we'll talk.** "

"...I'm okay," Cab said, standing up and dusting himself off. He looked around. "Hey Wayt, did you throw something a minute ago?"

" **Yeah, the Gem I pulled out. Why?** "

"And, Agent Day-Break? Did you sign up for full insurance on your rental?" He pointed towards the road.

"What does that…" She trailed off as she saw what Cab was pointing at. The glittery Gem had landed on top of her moped, crushing the whole front half. "...No. No I did not," she sighed.

"Well shoot. You can catch a ride with us, I guess."

The wave that had collapsed into the trees slowly trickled back into the sea. It was still a nice day, mid-afternoon now, with the waves quietly rising and receding on the sand in a way vacationers seemed to like. The last of the birds that had taken off in a panic earlier were landing. By tomorrow morning, it would be as though none of that had happened.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

 _Standing on the spot, ready for your shot, even though it's fraught_

 _Protecting love and peace all through the night_

 _Running to the light, fighting off a fright, 'cause you got the might_

 _Cut through the rampant arrogance of despair_

 _When hope is eaten away, and all joy is lost_

 _The rescuers act, the champions rise_

 _And heroes prove their worth_

 _Fear will beckon, dread will beckon, woe will beckon_

 _Stealing the spotlight again_

 _Summon resolve, summon wisdom, summon courage_

 _Aim those lights back at your stage_

 _It's time for action, it's time for daring_

 _The two of you, storm or shine - Sunny Splash!_


End file.
